The rubber meets the art in new exhibit

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Written by Debra Brehmer, Contributing writer
Nov 3, 2010

A Chakaia Booker sculpture on display at Milwaukee Art Museum. – Photo: Art Elkon

I thought for sure Chakaia Booker’s series of sculptures made from re-claimed automobile tires would finally succeed in looking good in the long hallway of the Calatrava addition at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Her show is part of an exhibition series called “On-Site” that focuses on artists interacting with this non-traditional space.

In a sense, all of the artists in this series, including Liam Gillick, Richard Long, Santiago Cucullu and Andrea Zettel, have contributed interesting installations that allow us to newly experience Calatrava’s dazzling ribbed passageway. Yet we are always aware of the struggle and tension between the art and the architecture. Nothing sits quite right in these long expanses of white.

Why? Because they are too complete in and of themselves. The experience of walking through the connective channels diminishes anything that attempts to occupy them.

But I thought Chakaia Booker’s work would be the perfect foil. She is an African-American artist who lives in New York City and works with tire rubber. She cuts, shreds and uncoils the tough, thick oil-derived material and uses it to sculpt human-scaled forms that carry a robust, gestural street-savvy grace. Because the work is gnarly, dense, textured and black, it seems that it would converse well with the light and white of the space.

Unfortunately, there is no conversation here. Booker’s sculptures simply sit there, just as they would in any gallery. And there are too many of them. They look crowded and uncomfortable. Many of the pieces occupy conventional sculpture pedestals or hang from metal stands, which constricts the spirit of the work. Only one piece sits directly on the floor and one is on the wall. These two pieces mesh best with the corridor, because they fuse and interact with it.

The problem with this installation is that it tames the power of Booker’s work, which should be a bit wilding and unwieldy, oozing energy from the depths of its coarse, turgid black flesh. Yet there is almost a zoological or specimen-like feel to this display. We walk through and around the sculptures but a polite, erect distance pervades and the work begins to feel mannered and uptight when it should uncoil.

There are some great things about Booker’s sculptures, however. They effectively and exuberantly transform and transcend the point of their origin as tires. Booker has developed an immense vocabulary of how this nasty material can be formed into various patterns and textures. In some pieces, it is as if she is coiffing hair, letting tendrils fall, braiding, twisting and knotting, adding extensions or leaving elegant tangles. In others, there’s more of an assertion of an underlying idea or form, such as the plant-like “Hybrid” (2003) or the wing forms of “Industrial Perpetuosity II” (2001-2010).

When artists work with refuse – such as the sculptor John Chamberlain who crushes auto parts, the contemporary artists Alison Saar and Judy Pfaff or the African artist El Anatsui – they fully intend to keep the history and vibe of the material in the work. Booker is able to do this while still making elegant forms. Her work oh-so-gently holds associations to plantation work, oppression, African fashion, factory labor, the politics of oil-based economies and the overall white fear of blackness.

These sculptures are all about black skin but the message is delivered in a strong dose of formal, sculptural beauty, in which most viewers find comfort.

There’s something else quite wonderful that happens in this hallway. Booker’s work, unlike the other “On-Site” installations, was shifted to the east corridor, and the Modern bronze sculptures that are normally displayed there were moved to the west hallway. What is lovely, even though we can’t see both hallways at the same time, is the dialog between them.

Hallways are linear like the presentation of history. In one we have the standard white man’s hall of fame, with modern sculptures by Jacques Lipchitz, Henry Moore, Gaston Lachaise, etc. These serious art stars of the 20th century use bronze – molten, ballsy, expensive. The black girl in the east hall wields her forms with used tires – also quite a strong-armed medium, but grown from different roots.

The history of bronze lies in the aristocracy and military. The history of rubber is industrial, economic and proletariat. Thus we have a clean display of the Western and non-Western canons decorating two parallel hallways.

Ms. Booker offers an entirely different lineage as her work pulls from diverse African sources, such as Nkisi figures, tribal headdresses, carved doors and scarification patterns. But Ms. Booker occupies this space temporarily as a guest and those other guys have been there forever and will remain. We must note, however, that the MAM’s African American Art Alliance is making significant inroads in acquiring works by black artists and the permanent collection is beginning to reflect this important change.

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